Polish Primate Critical of Jews on Convent Issue

Poland’s Roman Catholic primate has accused Jews of violating the country’s sovereignty and told them not to dictate impossible terms in a dispute over a Carmelite convent at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz.

Cardinal Jozef Glemp called on the Jewish media not to stoke anti-Polish feelings and to stop referring to seven American Jews attacked outside the convent in southern Poland as heroes, the official news agency PAP said Sunday.

Glemp made his comments in a homily during celebrations Saturday marking the Feast of Our Lady of Czestochowa at the Jasna Gora monastery, in the southwestern city of Czestochowa.

Glemp called for dialogue, but his remarks were his harshest so far on the dispute over the convent at Auschwitz, where 4 million people, mostly Jews, were killed by the Nazis during World War II. Jews want the nuns moved from what they call a shrine to the Holocaust.

“We have our transgressions concerning Jewish people, but today one would like to say, ‘Dear Jewish people, do not talk to us from the position of a nation raised above all others, and do not dictate terms that are impossible to fulfill,’ ” Glemp said.

Feelings of All Poles Soured

“Don’t you see, esteemed Jewish people, that pronouncements against the Carmelite nuns sour the feelings of all Poles and violate our sovereignty that has been achieved at such pains.”

Glemp did not refer to a lapsed agreement signed by the Roman Catholic Church to move the nuns out by last February. Plans to build a prayer and meeting center to house them were suspended earlier this month.

In Jerusalem, Religious Affairs Minister Zevulun Hammer, following his return from a four-day visit to Poland, said Sunday that Polish officials and clergy had pledged to work for the removal of the convent.

‘Difficulties’ Cited

He told a news conference in Jerusalem that the Poles had agreed that the 1987 agreement between Jewish groups and the Vatican for the removal of the convent “must be implemented, but they claim they have some difficulties in the community, in the church.”

“They claim that maybe there was some naivete in signing such a contract without speaking before with all the parts of the community, so they want time to explain what the Jewish pain is in this matter.”

Hammer said the Polish authorities asked Israel and Jewish groups to halt protests while they work to evacuate the convent through quiet diplomacy.

But he added, “We must be convinced that our silence will not cancel and ignore our determination that this monastery be relocated.

“If we see the agreement is not implemented, maybe we will have to use protests, but we have to choose better ways of demonstrations--no violence and no trespassing.”

Glemp called for more talks and an end to what he called the spread of anti-Polish sentiment by the media.

“Your power is the mass media at your disposal in many countries. Let them not serve to spread anti-Polonism,” he said.

“Not long ago, seven Jews from New York launched an attack against the convent in Oswiecim (the Polish name for Auschwitz). Do not call the attackers heroes,” he added.

Polish workers attacked the seven Jews last month when they protested outside the convent. The protest was one of several this year at the convent, where the nuns moved in 1984 to pray for the dead of Auschwitz.

The convent is in a building at the death camp that is believed to have been a warehouse for the Zyklon-B gas used to kill Jews.